6.18.2008

Mathematicians Perplexed!

Wiltshire crop circle identified as symbolic code for first ten places of pi
Mathematicians are perplexed after a highly complex crop circle appeared in a Wiltshire field - depicting a fundamental mathematical symbol.
Right...mathematicians perplexed by fundamental mathematical symbol. At least the physicists are in the clear.
The circle is, apparently, a coded image representing a complex mathematical number — the first ten digits of pi — and even astrophysicists admit they find it “mind-boggling”.
Oops. Spoke to soon. What about other experts?
Initially, crop circle enthusiasts were stumped as to its meaning and even experts said it was mind-boggling. (ref)
Perplexed and mind boggling. Can we get a "baffling"
Baffling crop circles equal pi
OK...now we need a good theory as to how a perplexing, baffling, and mind boggling representation of the number pi could be created in the barley fields of Wroughton.
Lucy Pringle, who has spent decades researching crop circles, said that although she thought some were man-made, she found it hard to believe such an intricate crop circle could have been created by humans.

She added: "You can do it on a computer, but you try putting that in a field in the middle of the night and achieving that degree of mathematical accuracy."

Ms Pringle has visited the crop circle and said even though it was raining the night before it appeared, there was no mud inside the formation.

Her theory is that the designs are created by a spiralling electromagnetic force that hits the ground for a nanosecond.(ref)
Well there is something mind boggling about this story...but it's not the crop circle!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, crop circles are hard to believe in? Let's go with baby steps, then. Start with "the earth is not flat," then "maggots are not created directly from rotting meat," we'll keep going from there.

Anonymous said...

Awesome. That's a good one. Good circles take a lot of skill and effort.

I mean, when you're hovering that low the Gravfity B drive tends to get a bit wonky, and well the printer driver hack that lets your print crops ciricles using the Gravity A FTL drive is a bit flaky. I mean, I downloaded it off The Pirate Bay, and did follow the install docs. But still, sometimes it just falls over, so I have a lot of respect for the guys who did this.

wubby said...

Um... I haven't seen a picture of this crop circle, but my first thought was: "Don't ALL circle have a coded representation of PI in them?"

C/d=PI... right? And I think if you are careful, you should be able to get a whole lot more than 10 measly places!

The skepTick said...

I wonder if the same attention would be given if, instead of a crop circle, a computer printout of the first million digits of pi were found in the same location.